Abstract

The study of multicellular systems such as tumours, tissues, or organoids is critical to improving our understanding of the complex dynamics exhibited by these systems. For instance, the emergence of resistant cancer cells is a process that manifests at many different scales from the molecular to the population level. Multicellular systems such as tumours are complex adaptive systems an thus are no reducible to classical analytical techniques. Nevertheless, multi-scale simulations can be used to study these systems by integrating models of processes taking place at these different scales. In this way, multi-scale model simulations provide a genotype-to-phenotype mapping framework, that allows the exploration of genetic variations and their interaction with changing environmental conditions. In the Computational Biology Group, we are extending a multiscale modelling framework combining agent-based and models of signalling pathways (PhysiCell and PhysiBoSS), to link pathways’ activity and cells’ phenotypes to physical interactions among cells and with their environment. In this seminar, I will introduce the current status of our multi-scale framework, as well as the ongoing development of a novel extension to integrate metabolic models within the agent-based framework. This novel feature will allow studying the intersection between cell metabolism and their microenvironment, at the population.